Environment

"...Systemic risk in the financial system can be
remedied by the taxpayer, but no one will come to the rescue if the
environment is destroyed. That it must be destroyed is close to an
institutional imperative. Business leaders who are conducting
propaganda campaigns to convince the population that anthropogenic
global warming is a liberal hoax understand full well how grave is
the threat, but they must maximize short-term profit and market
share. If they don't, someone else will. This vicious cycle could
well turn out to be lethal. To see how grave the danger is, simply
have a look at the new Congress in the U.S., propelled into power
by business funding and propaganda. Almost all are climate deniers.
They have already begun to cut funding for measures that might
mitigate environmental catastrophe. Worse, some are true believers;
for example, the new head of a subcommittee on the environment who
explained that global warming cannot be a problem because God
promised Noah that there will not be another flood."
Noam Chomsky

A human population approaching 7 billion can be maintained
only by desolating the Earth. If wild habitat is given over to human
cultivation and habitation, if rainforests can be turned into green
deserts, if genetic engineering enables ever-higher yields to be
extorted from the thinning soils—then humans will have created for
themselves a new geological era, the Eremozoic, the Era of Solitude, in
which little remains on the Earth but themselves and the prosthetic
environment that keeps them alive. ~ John Gray

...the costs
of climate change, if not addressed, will be equivalent to losing 5
percent (and potentially as much as 20 percent) of the global gross
domestic product (GDP) each year, now and forever." Hundreds
of millions of people could be threatened with hunger, water
shortages, and severe economic deprivation. "Climate change is the
greatest example of market failure we have ever seen." from the Stern
Report on
the Economics of Climate Change. (updated 8/2011 in Technology
Review Magazine).

"it’s probably too late to stop the frying of the
planet unless we bring the industrial economy crashing to a very
abrupt halt. Even conservative mainstream scientists admit that
only complete collapse of the global industrial economy will save
us from runaway greenhouse . Naturally, their paper was rejected by
several journals — even the scientific community can’t
handle this particular truth — before it was published last
month in Climatic Change. We do not know how quickly we’ll
need to terminate the industrial economy to save our species. If we
did, we could spend that entire span arguing about the morality of
bringing down the industrial machine of death. Since we
don’t, we need to act as if the matter is urgent, which, as
it turns out, nicely matches the data on the topic .
Guy McPherson"

"... we are in the process of destroying a great
many things which are real for the sake of something that exists
chiefly in our imagination: money."
Decline of the Empire: Clueless Man.

The destruction of the natural world is not the result of
global capitalism, industrialisation, “Western civilisation” or any
flaw in
human institutions. It is a consequence of the evolutionary success of
an exceptionally rapacious primate. Throughout all of history and
prehistory, human advance has coincided with ecological devastation. —
John Gray, STRAW DOGS

"unchecked climate change equals the world depicted by Mad
Max, only hotter, with no beaches, and perhaps with even more chaos.” The
Age of Consequences:
The Foreign Policy and National Security Implications of Global Climate
Change (2007)

You want to hear about real manipulation? Media
Matters reports that for the past four years, not once was a scientist
on a
Sunday morning news show to talk climate change. Those discussions were
dominated by politicians or a media people. Sauce for the goose: Media
Matters found that every politician interviewed was a Republican. And
since I’m at it, please, don’t bother with false equivalencies. By the
way, Lamar Smith (R-Tex) is a climate change denier. And he’s taking
over the Congressional House Science Committee.
Phil Plait

"...as recently as 2006, only one third of Americans
actually believed climate change was real and caused by human activity,
and even now, it’s not uncommon to hear people on TV or radio
denouncing climate change. In Europe, climate change denial is seen as
the preserve of the crackpot, and few political figures or members of
the news media would dream of mentioning it, as doing so often receives
the same contempt from the European public as denying the holocaust." Imogen Reed

Republicans in Congress objected to the C.I.A.'s
creation of a climate change center and tried to deny money for it. The
American
weather satellite program is losing capability because of years of
underfunding and mismanagement, imperiiing the ability to predict
and monitor major storms."
John Broder NYT (11/9/2012)

“Republican presidential contender Donald Trump said
on Tuesday he would renegotiate America’s role in the U.N. global
climate accord, spelling potential doom for an agreement many view as a
last chance to turn the tide on global warming.” - Reuters, 5/18/16

If the Kyoto Protocol is the best that the
evolutionary
process can provide as an example of the survival of the fittest,
the very clear deduction is that we're not fit to survive, and
we're not going to. We have so lost our way. Aubrey
Meyer

At the forefront of the defense of nature are those
often called “primitive”: members of indigenous and
tribal groups, like the First Nations in Canada or the Aborigines
in Australia - the remnants of peoples who have survived the
imperial onslaught. At the forefront of the assault on nature are
those who call themselves the most advanced and civilized: the
richest and most powerful nations.
Noam Chomsky

Blinded by ignorance and self-absorption, humanity is
destroying the creation. There is still time to assume the
stewardship of the natural world that we owe to future human
generations." E. O.
Wilson, The Creation.

It is not easy to see how the more extreme forms of
nationalism can long survive when men have seen the Earth in its
true perspective as a single small globe against the stars: Arthur
C. Clarke

The United States' natural resource policy - which
gives away mineral rights and is controlled by special interests -
is a model for how things should not be done. The secrecy with
which the Bush administration formulated its energy policy - even
refusing to disclose the names of the industry representatives who
participated - also makes for a dismal role model. Bush's arguments
for executive privilege are loved by those trying to keep secret
what they are doing - whether to benefit themselves, their cronies,
or a wider circle of friends who have helped them stay in power. pg
151 Making Globalization Work. Joseph E. Stiglitz. www.wwnorton.com

...the distaste for accepting the horrors of climate
change, denial, stupidity, fecklessness, whatever you want to call
it, has spawned a lively industry in climate change denial that is
a wholly owned subsidiary of the oil, gas, and coal industries and
a political sub-culture in its own right, aimed at defeating any
policy consensus that would reduce the use (and sale ) of oil, gas
and coal. Climate denial also happens to work nicely for that big
chunk of the public at large that does not want to entertain any
comprehensive change in the way we currently do things. And so the
debate about what to do about climate change decays into
inconherence as the deniers deliberiately distort the facts while
the science-minded are buffaloed by such mendacity and frustrated
by a public that isn't interested in the facts. James Howard
Kunstler: Too Much
Magic pg199.

Ocean
Conservancy promotes healthy and diverse ocean ecosystems and
opposes practices that threaten ocean life and human life.

Earth
Justice
a
non-profit public interest law firm dedicated to protecting the
magnificent places, natural resources, and wildlife of this earth
and to defending the right of all people to a healthy environment.
We bring about far-reaching change by enforcing and strengthening
environmental laws on behalf of hundreds of organizations and
communities.

Fires

Politicization of Climate Science

Today,
GAP is releasing a comprehensive report,
Redacting the Science of Climate Change, detailing the findings
of a year-long investigation into political interference at federal
climate science agencies. The report demonstrates how policies and
practices have increasingly restricted the flow of scientific
information emerging from publicly-funded climate change research.
This has negatively affected the media’s ability to report
objectively on scientific issues, public officials’ capacity
to respond with appropriate policies, and full public understanding
of environmental concerns. -- Dylan Blaylock 3/27/07

Human population
increase is
putting pressure on the earth's environment. Malthus wasn't wrong,
just early. People are failing to recognize limits
to growth.

Expect continued and accelerating warming.
Check out
some of
the evidence for Global Warming, or
the Report of
the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change.
The CO2 safe upper limit is estimated at 350 ppm, but has actually risen to over
400 and is increasing rapidly. It persists for centuries, and UN
scientists warn time is
running out to tackle
global warming.

Arctic ice will certainly melt, open water will
appear near
the
North
Pole, sea levels will rise flooding many coastal cities and low-lying
lands, glaciers will disappear reducing the natural
supply of fresh water. Serious droughts will shrink crop yields and will be disastrous for
many. Desertification will accelerate. Lakes will shrink. Dust
Bowls expand. Species will go extinct.

Sea
levels will rise forcing
migration from areas near water level. The migration is already
beginning. Insects will proliferate in northern climates bringing
more disease. Many low coastal areas will become uninhabitable
forcing many of the world's poorest to migrate to higher ground.
Likelyhood of resource wars much higher. Massive immigration from
climate impacted areas inevetable. Danger of nuclear war,
particularly between India and Pakistan, will grow.

It is well established that Biodiversity
has declined. This will be a permanent loss. Many species will need
to move to preserve their habitat. Tropical species, insects, and
disease will spread north. See Elizabeth Kolbert's Pulitzer-prize
winning book: The Sixth
Extinction

Pollutants will
become more
hazardous and more
threatening.
Disease increase including cancer and environmentally related
diseases due to overpopulation,
pollution, environmental damage,
and climate change.

Peak oil will make
fuel, transport,
and fertilizer,
and
food more expensive.

Deforestation
will accelerate as demand grows for
biofuels.
Lack
of Farmland will also be exacerbated by urban growth. Food
shortages will be extensive.

Over
fishing has already caused collapse of ocean
ecology. Lakes and streams are too polluted for fishing.

Increased financial burden due to
natural-resource
scarcity
will
result in more frequent wars.

Population growth will put further pressure on
resources.
Resource scarcity of food, water, and land will increase poverty and
migration.
Poverty is a driver of war.

Because
there
are likely to be considerable non-linearities, climate change may not happen gradually For example arctic ice
melt will
cause a change in the albedo, permafrost melt can release large
amounts of methane, fresh water runoff from melting Greenland ice
can cause a slowing or stopping of the Gulf
Stream. So some of these changes could happen rapidly. Arctic
ice melt is much faster than computer models predicted.

350 ppm CO2 was estimated the
highest safe level,
but we are over 400 ppm in 2016. It will probably never be less again.
CO2 persists for centuries in the atmosphere.

other websites:

"Petroleum geologists have known for 50
years
that
global
oil production would "peak" and begin its inevitable decline within
a decade of the year 2000. Moreover, no renewable energy systems
have the potential to generate more than a tiny fraction of the
power now being generated by fossil fuels. In short, the end of
oil signals the end of civilization, as we know it." Fromdieoff.com.